Graham Klyne wrote:
> Stating:
> The expression of an RDF statement [or set of statements]
> in some context of discourse that is taken to be an assertion
> of the truth of the statement[s] in that context.
Well as Pierre observed:
[every statement, isa, stating] and
[every stating, isa, statement].
Nevertheless we should be able to avoid infinite regress by
understanding that a statement is an ~ideal~ thing just like
a perfect circle ... it exists nowhere in the real world.
In the real world we have only statings. To state an "isa"
relationship (as I did above) between a real thing and an
ideal thing may end up being a category error. I believe
CYC got around this by inventing a new property "genels".
But I have a bone to pick with your use of the word "truth"
in the definition. I may aggregate a bunch of statements
and publish them ... when I do that, I am making no
assertion as to their truth or even their mutual consistency
... I might only be saying that I find them usefully viewed
together. To get around this quibble, I have been toying
with a different definition of context:
Context:
A context is a collection of statements
that are connected from the point of view
of a running process.
So, were we to decide not to have a strong commitment to any
particular epistemology, your definition might become:
Stating:
The expression of an RDF statement
[or set of statements] in some context
of discourse.
Seth Russell
Has a RDF parser running on a win32 computer, thanks to
Jason Diamond !